IPCRES seeks to leverage what is clearly emerging as one of the major macro-phenomena in information technology in the next century pervasive computing. Pervasive computing refers to a ubiquitous "fabric" of intelligent instruments, appliances, information sources and information analysis tools all tied together by high-speed wired and wireless networks, and including personal software service "agents" that constantly search for, gather, and analyze information important to us. Pervasive computing envisages a time when the relentless decrease in the price of microprocessors coupled with the equally relentless increase in their power allows microprocessors to become integrated seamlessly into every aspect of the fabric of our day-to-day lives. This, coupled with advances in mobile, high performance, and converged networks that link these microprocessors to each other, will lead to a world in which computing, telecommunications and information are truly pervasive.
The technologies that underlie pervasive computing include:
In what follows, the impact of advances in these key technologies from the perspective of next generation Internet software and from the perspective of new capabilities in telecommunication will be discussed. This in turn suggests the types of laboratories that IPCRES will seek to establish to move Indiana into the center of research in these areas.
The World Wide Web is one of the most visible applications of the Internet era. Its explosive growth over the past five years foreshadows what might be expected in the next decade from pervasive computing. However, the emergence of the Web was preceded by fifteen years of distributed computing research, which evolved alongside the development of computer networks. The majority of this research is only now beginning to mature. The Web systems in use today will soon be eclipsed by a host of new software technologies that will have a far greater impact on our lives than the conventional public portals and e-commerce sites that attract so much current attention. A new software infrastructure for distributed, collaborative work and learning is emerging that offers several, major new paradigm shifts in the way we see the Web. For example, rather than viewing the network as a vast "cyberspace" that must be explored one link at a time, our portal to the Web is going to acquire the intelligence to act as our information "agent''.
Furthermore, the boundary between personal computers and the rest of the electronic information world is going to become very blurred. Desktops will eventually be replaced by an information space that is customized to our individual interests and concerns. This information space will be automatically connected to that of others who share similar interests, but it will also maintain our privacy better than current technology security will be designed in, not added as an after-thought. As we move through the day from our desktop computer, to our laptop computer, to our wireless handheld device, we will maintain our contact and interaction with this customized and personalized information space. Computer software agents will have a persistent knowledge of us what projects we are working on at the office, what information we're actively seeking, or what news stories might be of interest to us and will be able to work on our behalf, gathering information and analyzing data even while we sleep.
Our interaction with this information space will not be limited to devices we commonly consider to be "computers". One of the biggest changes of the early twenty-first century information technology will involve the emergence of a fabric of smart sensors that surround us, monitoring our safety and augmenting our senses. (We already see this in contemporary automobiles where dozens of sensors are part of a network of performance and safety features.) This network of sensors and smart devices will become part of our information sphere, fully connected to the network and constantly gathering data. In addition, most of the devices in our homes and offices will also become part of our information sphere. Current research suggests "wearable computers" woven into the fabric of our clothing will replace pagers and cell phones.
On a broader scale, many researchers have been considering the next generation of the Internet. It is widely agreed that the growing complexity of the network and the new demands and services we will expect of it in the future will require a different approach to the delivery of core services. If we look at the history of technology, we can find many examples of "networks" that have grown into services that are so reliable and ubiquitous that we cannot imagine living without them. Examples include the transportation network, the natural gas and fuel supply networks and, of course, the communications network. The best example is the US electrical power grid. By a complex system of load sharing we have a system that is almost always able to supply the needs of a nation of individuals and companies with reliable and consistent service. Researchers have coined the term "Information Grid" to describe the advanced collection of network services that will become the next-generation Internet. Work is underway now to build the prototypes of this new type of Grid.
Other evolving technologies that will change the landscape will include highly portable teleimmersive displays that will allow information content to be superimposed over the user's field of view. Such a head mounted display will be no more obtrusive than a pair of glasses and it will be connected to a computer woven into the fabric of your coat which is also part of the wireless network. Voice activated, such a system would be able to use visual pointers to answer queries like, "Which person at this train station is the one waiting for me?" Or "Where are the legal loopholes in this contract I am reading?" Or "Is this footbridge structurally sound enough for me to cross?" Or "Where do I add motor oil to this engine? And how should these hoses be connected?"
While much of this may sound like science fiction, experiments with remote teleimmersive "help desks" for mechanics are already underway at places like NASA. And voice and character recognition software is becoming more sophisticated and head mounted displays are shrinking in size every day. The fabric that binds all of these advances together will be the high bandwidth pervasive telecommunications/computation network.
IPCRES will establish a number of research laboratories to work on some of the fundamental problems in pervasive computing software technologies that must be solved if the vision that has just been described is to be realized. Many of these problems can be collected together into five main areas. IPCRES will establish laboratories in a number of them; the final ones will be chosen based on the availability of world class research talent. These areas are:
Telecommunications is the glue that binds the increasingly dense pervasive computing environment together. When we think about modern telecommunication, it is easy to forget how much it has evolved in last 160 years. Figure 1 illustrates a brief chronology of telecommunications and the Internet's evolution. Of course it is not surprising to note that the density of invention has grown exponentially with the passing of time. This is the way it is in all aspects of late 20th century technology: change happens at a rate that is ever increasing. However, it can be argued that in this case, it is the advancing technology of telecommunication itself that is the catalyst of rapid change in almost all aspects of modern life.
| 1844 | Invention of Telegraph |
| 1866 | Transatlantic Cable |
| 1876 | The Telephone. Western Telegraph turns down offer to buy the technology. "What shall we do with a toy like that?" |
| 1892 | Telsa/Marconi invent radio |
| 1899 | Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co founded |
| 1932 | First transmitted visible television picture |
| 1938 | Color TV |
| 1960 | First Communications satellite |
| 1961 | Computers work over telephone lines |
| 1962 | Satellite transmits the first television images and telephone calls |
| 1964 | Telemedicine over satellite radio |
| 1965 | Space probe transmitted pictures from Mars |
| 1966 | Phone calls over glass fiber |
| 1968 | Photo-telegraphy over the telephone line |
| 1969 | ARPANET: The origin of the Internet |
| 1970 | Time division multiplex (TDM) and direct dial long-distance calling |
| 1971 | Rank Xerox put the first telecopier onto the market |
| 1971 | Remote computer terminals introduced |
| 1972 | Cable TV in the USA , first Internet email message |
| 1973 | Ethernet introduced |
| 1974 | Internet Protocols published |
| 1975 | Internet satellite links cross two oceans |
| 1977 | Highest year of telecom satellite launches |
| 1978 | First fiber optic cable in operation |
| 1980 | First broadband communications first conference calls. |
| 1985 | Navigation satellites in use |
| 1986 | US Navy achieves one-meter global positioning |
| 1989 | First ISDN |
| 1990 | Communication satellites can now each carry 17,000 calls or 16 TV channels |
| 1991 | World Wide Web released |
| 1992 | Internet passes 1 million hosts |
| 1993 | Graphical web browser released by NCSA (named Mosaic precursor to Netscape) |
| 1994 | Shopping malls, Internet banks, pizza delivery on the net. |
| 1995 | Audio streaming on the Internet, vBNS research net created |
| 1996 | Internet phones catch the attention of US telecommunication companies who ask the US Congress to ban the technology, Telecommunications act of 1996 the beginning of convergence. |
| 1997 | The Internet explodes. "Push" technology and multi-casting take off. |
| 1998 | E-Commerce, E-Auctions, Portals. Major mergers among Internet media, Internet service providers, and telecommunication companies. |
Figure 1 Historical time-line for telecommunication and the Internet.
It is clearly impossible to predict accurately the next 10 years of telecommunications technology, but some major trends are very clear. Voice, video and data networks will steadily converge into the same Internet Protocol (IP)-based transmission infrastructure. Wireless voice and data networks will be ubiquitous. And we can expect over a thousand-fold increase in bandwidth in almost all communication channels.
The already rapid evolution of wireless communication will accelerate greatly in the years ahead. It is expected that the number of wireless telephone calls will surpass fixed-wire network calls in the US by 2004. In countries with a more coherent approach to wireless standards, the point where wireless overtakes traditional wired phones will happen next year. While this rapid penetration of the telecommunication market by wireless technology is astonishing, the most significant change will come when the "3rd Generation" (3G) communication protocols for global, voice-data broadband wireless communication are completely defined and in widespread use. This will happen within the next three years. 3G will allow telephones, sensors, and personal handheld "PDA" devices to locate each other and exchange messages. The race to build the software to drive this part of the digital infosphere is already on. (Microsoft does not own a significant share of this industry, so the market for the micro-operating systems needed to drive small network aware devices is still wide open.)
As in the software technologies area, IPCRES will establish a number of research laboratories to work on some of the fundamental problems in telecommunications that must be solved to bring about truly pervasive computing. Again, many of these problems can be collected together into five main areas and IPCRES will establish laboratories in a number of them, the final ones being chosen based on the availability of world-class research talent.
More substantial details of the general areas in which the IPCRES Laboratories mentioned in Section 3.1 and 3.2 will pursue research are given in Section 6.
Most of our communications will be continuous and autonomic, i.e. information about us, our status, our health, and our location will be monitored by a sensor grid and communicated over the network. Our messages as well as our information sources will follow us around. These facts alone clearly suggest a substantial social policy research agenda. What does privacy mean in an era when our personal communication and information tools merge with such a sensor net? How will cultures and political institutions evolve and use or abuse this technology?
The impact on our lives of pervasive computing and ubiquitous information is not well understood. Pervasive computing is, as the name suggests, virtually inescapable. It will happen around us, whether we want it or not. The question is, as Lewis Carrol's Humpty Dumpty put it, who is to be master? We must strive to see that "pervasive" is not parsed as "per" (as in "perverse") + "vasive" (as in "invasive"). Toward this end IPCRES will be concerned with assessing not just the usability, but also the social/ethical impacts of pervasive computing.
How do we learn to manage and exploit an information space of such complexity? What capabilities provided by this technology are of use in creating new businesses? How does an existing industrial enterprise make use of these capabilities to re-invent its design and manufacturing processes? The introduction of such technology into our lives also poses as many cultural challenges as it does technical opportunities. Too many of us are already slaves to beepers and cell phones. How can this new technology be used to improve the quality of life? What role does it play in life-long education? These are all research questions that will be addressed within the framework of the IPCRES Initiative.
To this end, IPCRES will explore ways of partnering with existing units at Indiana University concerned with social and ethical issues. IUB is fortunate to have both the Center for Social Informatics and the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, which has received substantial funding from the Lilly Endowment. The latter is an endowed center at Indiana University, charged with fostering the examination and discussion of ethical issues in American society. And at IUPUI there is the Institute for the Study of Intellectual Property and Education. Indiana University is also fortunate to have outstanding departments of philosophy, religious studies, and sociology. We hope to involve faculty and students from these and other units.
2. Providing a Solution | Table of contents | 4. Information Technology and Indiana University
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